SEATTLE — The stuff might not have been vintage Max Scherzer, the three-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer who once possessed one of the best fastballs in the game, but the 41-year-old has accumulated a wealth of pitching knowledge during his 18 seasons and more than 3,000 innings in the majors.
Most importantly: The vintage Scherzer intensity remains unmatched.
Scherzer, making his first start of the postseason after a difficult end to the regular season, gave up two runs and three hits over 5 innings to lead the Toronto Blue Jays to an 8-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Thursday night to even the American League Championship Series at two games apiece.
Scherzer’s famous ferocity was on display in the fifth inning, when manager John Schneider came out for a visit with two outs and a runner on base, after Scherzer had recorded a hard-hit out to right field.
Scherzer screamed at his manager: “I’m good! Let’s go!”
Schneider quickly returned to the dugout, one of the shortest mound visits in postseason history. You don’t mess with “Mad Max.”
Scherzer struck out Randy Arozarena on a 79 mph curveball to end the inning and then got two outs in the sixth before finally departing after a two-out walk and throwing 87 pitches.
Early on, it didn’t look as if Scherzer would last long. In the bottom of the first, he walked Cal Raleigh with one out and then walked Julio Rodriguez on four pitches. A couple of pitchers in the Toronto bullpen started stretching, just in case the inning started to get out of hand.
That was understandable given how Scherzer ended the regular season: He had a 9.00 ERA over his final six starts, giving up 25 runs and eight home runs in 25 innings. In his last start on Sept. 24, he gave up 10 hits in five innings. In the start before that, he got knocked out in the first inning of a 20-1 loss to the Kansas City Royals. He wasn’t on the roster for the AL Division Series against the New York Yankees, as the Blue Jays instead loaded up on relievers and used a bullpen game in the clinching Game 4.
“I don’t want to put too much stock into this,” Scherzer had said Wednesday when asked about his health. “Look, you have hiccups all the time, ailments all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had something and gone out there and pitched well and won. So I don’t want to sit here and go backwards and blame injuries for any way I pitched. When I take the mound, I take the mound, and I have the attitude I’m going to win no matter what.”
Scherzer escaped the first inning Thursday when he induced Jorge Polanco to ground into a double play on a 1-2 changeup — doubling down with back-to-back changeups. After the inning, he stalked off the mound toward the plate, as he often does, a picture of the emotion that has marked his career. Then he realized he had to let the umpire check his glove.
He gave up a home run to Josh Naylor in the second inning but settled down from there, even throwing 45 fastballs to set up his variety of off-speed pitches (slider, curveball, changeup). In getting the win, Scherzer became only the fourth starting pitcher 41 or older to win a playoff game, joining Kenny Rogers, Roger Clemens and Dennis Martinez. It also ended a streak of five winless postseason starts dating to the 2021 NLCS, a stretch in which he had gone 0-2 with a 7.71 ERA. In addition, he became the first pitcher to make a postseason start for six different teams.
Scherzer got help again from the hard-hitting Toronto offense — and perhaps from a questionable quick hook by Mariners manager Dan Wilson of starter Luis Castillo in the third inning. The Jays had scored on Andres Gimenez’s two-run homer — making it two games in a row that Gimenez, Toronto’s No. 9 hitter, had delivered an early home run — and had the bases loaded with one out when Wilson brought in Gabe Speier, his top left-handed reliever. But the move backfired when Speier walked Daulton Varsho and then George Springer added an RBI double in the fourth. Wilson brought in Matt Brash, another of his high-leverage relievers, but he uncorked a wild pitch as the Jays made it 5-2.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. added a home run to right-center in the seventh inning — his fifth of the postseason and the Blue Jays’ 17th in eight postseason games.
By the ninth inning, many Mariners fans had exited the ballpark, leaving the Blue Jays fans who had trekked down from Canada chanting, “Let’s go, Blue Jays!”